‘Choir Boy’: Theater Review

In a key scene of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s affecting play Choir Boy, the central character Pharus Jonathan Young, whose swishy mannerisms make the open secret of his homosexuality impossible to ignore, argues that the traditional songs known as Negro Spirituals may or may not have contained coded clues to help runaway slaves escape their oppressors. He mounts an impassioned case that the more enduring purpose of spirituals should be evaluated in their capacity to provide courage, strength and healing even in contemporary free society: “That is the resistance.”

All the students of the elite Charles R. Drew Prep School for Boys are navigating the passage to young black manhood with different degrees of struggle. Their only unified moments of peace and comfort come when they join their voices in heavenly song.

For Pharus — played with a mix of defiant pride, cheeky flamboyance, touching confusion and gnawing erosion of his self-worth in a galvanic performance from bright new talent Jeremy Pope — the path is especially tricky. He aspires to the perceived nobility of being “a Drew man,” even if that requires certain denials. His sexual desires for one, which he sublimates in his unstinting dedication to the school choir.